1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a communication system, a communication apparatus which can be connected to a communication system, a control method for a communication system, and a control method for a communication apparatus which can be connected to a communication system.
2. Description of the Related Art
In recent years, as the spreads of terminal devices have increased, network architectures that can attain efficient transmission to realize high-speed networks have been studied.
In such networks, multiplex communications between nodes are attained using channels of wavelengths, frequencies, and the like, and terminal devices to be connected are determined in units of channels.
In such network, since data transmitted by a terminal device is sent while being distributed onto a plurality of multiplexed channels, the entire network can transmit a large volume of data although each channel has a small data transmission capacity.
For example, when a terminal device connected to channel 1 transmits 120-Mbps data, since that data is transmitted while being distributed onto the respective channels, each channel need only have a transmission capacity of 15 Mbps (120 Mbps/8 channels).
In such network, the transmission capacity that each terminal device can transmit is obtained by subtracting the volume of data which is already being transmitted by each channel from the maximum transmission capacity of the channel.
More specifically, in a network obtained by multiplexing 8 channels each having a maximum transmission capacity of 150 Mbps, when the respective channels are transmitting 100-Mbps data, the data volume that each terminal device can transmit additionally is 50 Mbps (150 Mbpsxe2x88x92100 Mbps).
However, in the prior art, as described above, since the transmission capacity that each terminal device can transmit is obtained by subtracting the volume of data which is currently being transmitted by each channel from the maximum transmission capacity of the channel, the terminal device cannot transmit data beyond that capacity.
More specifically, in the entire network of the above-mentioned example, since the transmission capacity that each channel can additionally transmit is 50 Mbps, the entire network can communicate up to 400-Mbps data (50 Mbpsxc3x978 channels=400 Mbps), but each terminal device can only transmit 50-Mbps data.
It is an object of the present invention to flexibly use the transmission capacity so as to solve the above-mentioned problems.
It is another object of the present invention to effectively use the transmission capacity of the entire network.
It is still another object of the present invention to effectively use the transmission capacity which is not in use.
Other features and advantages of the present invention will be apparent from the following description taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings, in which like reference characters designate the same or similar parts throughout the figures thereof.